reality

Perception, reaction & mindfulness

Codie Surratt, PsychCentral: I am frequently asked “What is mindfulness?”

I start by saying something poignant like “It’s being aware and in the present moment” or “It’s about allowing each experience to wash over us like a cool spring rain, without attachment or judgments.” I love these answers and they generally tend to spawn a lively conversation about experiences, judgment and simply allowing ourselves to be present.

Mindfulness, though, is also about perception and reaction. Here’s what I mean…

I love Viktor Frankl, the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who survived a World War II concentration camp. He is a genuine hero of mine…

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Meditation is death of the ego

Gurumatha Amma,The New Indian Express: Our whole education, culture, civilisation is a training in how to become unreal, and how to prevent yourself from becoming real and and touching the reality which is hidden within you. Now meditation is the death of ego and how to contact the real and how to be again real. The first thing to be understood is how we go on becoming unreal and once this process is understood many things change immediately. The very understanding becomes mutation. We are born undivided and whole as one individual, neither body nor mind. The body and mind are two aspects…

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In a little park in Ghent

Yesterday i was sitting in a little park in Ghent together with a friend talking about….friendship. The sun was shining gently and cosy on us as if she was warming our love for beauty and truth. And i remembered Narziss and Goldmund, the novel of Herman Hesse, about the remarkable story of two friends.

A few weeks ago i left my job to work for the Buddhist Centre in Ghent and so i had to say goodbye to my colleagues some of whom i have known for years. I definitely wanted to leave my job yes but i didn’t want some of my colleagues to dissapear. I wanted to hold them, to grasp them, i wanted them near me, to stay near me, i wanted our experiences with one another to last. I realised that a good part of my life is over. So i looked for all kinds of reasons to justify that things could go on just like they used to do, as if i would still be working there. What a difference with Narziss and Goldmund!

These two people are friends and they don’t even see each other that much. Most of the time they are living separately but they are in each others’ minds nearly all the time, as a guide, as a mentor. And if they do see each other they don’t waste time. They ask questions to one another, penetrating questions to help the other live his qualities. To help the other unfold the fullest possible potential as a human being. And all that space…they don’t limit each other, they give one another space to breath, to grow, to explore…And there was i manipulating reality, colleagues and myself because i find saying goodbye and things changing uncomfortable, even painful.

Narziss and Goldmund rejoice in each other as well. Rejoicing too is connected with the flowing nature of reality. And their rejoicing in each other is fluent, spontaneous. Sometimes i rejoice in friends as well and sometimes i almost immediately think, in a secretly way, i can do that too and probably even better. But other times when i really succeed in rejoicing wholeheartedly and sincerely, wow, what an energy is flowing then, what a fountain of joy and happinness, what a flow of reality itself.

Narziss and Goldmund showed me that friendship is about letting things flow, about relaxing in reality, about pointing out to each other the qualities one has in order to unfold these and realise a more creative life in accordance with reality.

And i had tried for days on end to deny all this, to capture others in my nets, to limit myself and them to an illusion of holding, not letting go…but now Narziss and Goldmund are my friends.

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